Comment Dustbot Project (Score 1) 1
Link to project site (English / Italian): http://www.dustbot.org/index.php?menu=home
Submission + - Italian company proposes robot firefighter
Big Nemo '60 writes: From an Italian engineering magazine: Mr. Domenico Piatti, an engineer and fire brigade officer in Naples (Italy), developed an autonomous firefighting robot specially (but not exclusively) designed for motorway/railroad tunnels.
Named ROBOGAT, the robot moves along a lightweight monorail, that also includes mains for water (and optionally foam). It is equipped with both visible and infrared cameras. When a fire alert is triggered in the tunnel, two robots will start, one from each end of the tunnel, and traveling at up to 60 km/h they will reach the site of the fire. Once there, they will autonomously attach to the closest water/foam plug and aim to the fire with their multiple rotating nozzles. The external body is made of a ceramic/titanium composite, also once the robot is attached to the water plug, water is used to cool the "skin" of the robot before feeding the nozzles.
While the robot is fully autonomous, an operator from a control room may take over as needed. The robot runs on batteries; optionally, water from the mains can operate a small turbine recharging the batteries and extending the operating time. The whole thing is quite small, and can be easily retrofitted in existing galleries.
Company website (in English): http://www.robogat.com/home_Eng.htm
(Notice: I am not related in any way with the manufacturing company, I just found a featured article in the magazine of the Italian National Council of Engineers — only in dead tree form, sorry.)
Named ROBOGAT, the robot moves along a lightweight monorail, that also includes mains for water (and optionally foam). It is equipped with both visible and infrared cameras. When a fire alert is triggered in the tunnel, two robots will start, one from each end of the tunnel, and traveling at up to 60 km/h they will reach the site of the fire. Once there, they will autonomously attach to the closest water/foam plug and aim to the fire with their multiple rotating nozzles. The external body is made of a ceramic/titanium composite, also once the robot is attached to the water plug, water is used to cool the "skin" of the robot before feeding the nozzles.
While the robot is fully autonomous, an operator from a control room may take over as needed. The robot runs on batteries; optionally, water from the mains can operate a small turbine recharging the batteries and extending the operating time. The whole thing is quite small, and can be easily retrofitted in existing galleries.
Company website (in English): http://www.robogat.com/home_Eng.htm
(Notice: I am not related in any way with the manufacturing company, I just found a featured article in the magazine of the Italian National Council of Engineers — only in dead tree form, sorry.)
Comment Re:The model assumptions were ideological (Score 1) 361
In 2006, in The Black Swan [ 16 ]
Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks - when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur
...I shiver at the thought.
The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deem these events "unlikely".
Comment Re:Self-amputation? (Score 1) 320
Does the same apply to a cancerous limb? [...] Some traumatic memories eat away at your mental health.
You raise a good point. Now I feel bad for choosing that metaphor
Nowadays, amputation is mostly used as a last resort, when other treatments failed, or were not applied properly, or the cancer/gangrene/infection spreads so fast there is no time to do otherwise.
Every rule has exceptions, so I guess there would be some circumstances where erasing an especially traumatizing memory would be the last viable option. I am rather concerned that, like other practices, this one could become a choice of mere convenience.
There are other considerations, that bring us further away from the "medical" metaphor. Let's consider a crime: the victim could have his/her memory erased, but what about the culprit? The perpetrator would remember the crime - and the victim - while the victim would have no memory of either.
Would that be fair? Should the memory of the culprit be erased too, provided that he/she were apprehended? Before or after the punishment? If both the victim and the perpetrator have no memory of the crime, did the crime really happen?
Then, again: what if several people share the same traumatic experience, but some of them do *not* want their memory removed? How would that affect both the "erased" and the "not-erased" ones?
IMHO if this were to become a common practice, it is going to raise a lot of debate.
